SAVED BY AN ALIBI.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume IX, Issue 26, 26 November 1903, Page 3

SAVED BY AN ALIBI.

‘rraNDER the heading of “Fish Ghosts VL-l for Christmas,” a correspondent of a contemporary narrates a story which was told in the smoking-room of Sunach Lodge, Perthshire, after a day’s pike-fishing in Glensunach Loch.

“ I have known of a fisherman being visited by a ghost,” said Rose, one of the party, “ and, as 1 am an old man, I should like the story to be preserved. I was living some fourteen miles from Worcester forty years ago, and was a keen fisherman. One day, late in the season, I had a good afternoon of trout-fishing in a brook which ran three miles from my house, and on the way home, on a very dark evening, was drencher! to the skin by a thunderstorm, in spite ol my efforts to escape by sheltering here and there under sheds, hedges, and the like. Six months afterwards I was disturbed « bed by a loud voice in my room saying: “ ‘Get up, and go to Worcester.’

“ I started, rubbed my eyes, sat up ano listened, but heard nothing, and there wai not a breath of air stirring out of doors. 1 went off to sleep again, and was again speedily disturbed by the same cry. “ I now awoke my wife, and asked if shl had heard anything. “ ‘ Certainly not,’ she replied, bub she die not wonder I heard voices, after the indigesbible dinner I had made. This was small comfort, and again the words sounded, this time louder than ever, at my ear:

“ ‘ Get up, and go to Worcester.’ “I rose, and struck a light; it was halfpast four a. m., and pitch dark, with much rain I could see. The idea of descending, saddling the horse (for my groom lived at a distant cottage), and starting to Worcester in such a deluge, and in such darkness, was not at all cheerful. Bub the same words sounded more imperatively than before ai my ear, and, telling my wife I was going to Worcester for the day, I slipped on my clothes, let myself out, and began saddling a grey. With some surprise I noted that, whereas she always strongly resented this process by leaping and kicking, on this particular morning she was perfectly quiet and tractable. I rode along the dark and miry chain of roads which surrounded Millington with ease, partly from knowing them perfectly, partly because no one was stirring, and towards dawn approached the Severn, now in full flood, where it was necessary for me to cross, if I did nob care to go on, by bh« windings of the river—a much longer road —to the city. Here I expected bo spend half an hour bawling from the bank till the drowsy fenyman would be pleased to awake and come over to take us across. Curiously enough, as I rode down the bank, I espied him. waiting. He touched his hat and said :

“ ‘ All right, sir ; I heard you shouting, and came over as quickly as I could.’ “Of course, I had never shouted ; but the ruin and cold forbade my raising any question on the matter, and I thankfully got in and was ferried across. I had about gix miles to ride on the other side, and it was half-past seven when I rode into Worcester tired and hungry. However, 1 put iq; my beast, breakfasted, and, nob knowing what to do, strolled out into the city. A ghostly summons had brought me there but I had no further guidance, to one way seemed much the same as Another. Noticing a crowd pressing towards the assize courts, I fell in with them, and by dint of tipping and squeezing soon found myself listening to the end of a murder trial.

“ The prisoner, one Llewellyn Morris, had just been found guilty, and, as. I entered, the judge called upon him to say anything he desired against sentence being pronounced upon him. The accused seemed familiar to me, and yet I could not recall where I had met him. He was a little man, and appeared, while a crowded court hung upon his fate with breathless anxiety, to be the least concerned of the assemblage. He answered the judge respectfully, but carelessly enough, that he was enbiroly innocent of the murder, and was two or three miles away from the place where it was committed. He had a defence, a ‘ hally boy ’ he heard it was called, bub he could not produce his witness. He had no idea who his witness was, but on the night of the murder he had been fishing, and had walked a couple of miles on the road home, till the thunder roared and the rain descended like a waterspout, with a gentleman whom he had met at the riverTide. At length the storm was so fearful and the darkness so deep that they had both diverged from the road into a neighbouring churchyard, and taken refuge in its porch until, half-an-hour after, the tempest passed on. He had conversed that time with his neighbour, but had no idea who he was, or he would clear him, as that storm took place immediately after the old man had been murdered, and it would have been physically impossible for him to have stood in the porch unless he had been far away from the scene of the murder at that time. As it was, however, having no clue to his witness, he was content to leave himself in his lordship’s hands. “At once I remembered that this wa* the very man who had stood with me in tho church porch, and, rising amid much excitement, offered myself to the judge as a witness for the accused. After being sworn, I wrote down, at the judge’s request, what wo nad talked of, and what answers the prisoner nad made. Upon this the prisoner examined me. and the answers so tallied with what I nad written down that the judge delivered mother address to the jury, and, deleting their previous verdict, the jury unanimously, and without a moment’s hesitation,acquitted aim. We had talked, as it happened, af a curious legend in a neighbouring lord’s family, and the prisoner had given me some information about the spawning of trout which, as a fisherman, I had naturally remembered. Years afterwards, a convict at Dartmoor prison on his death-bed confessed that he alone was guilty of the murder for which my companion in the porch so narrowly escaped a conviction ; and so, you see, a ghost was of advantage for once, and let us hope, for the credit of fishermen, chose »ne of them to perforin an act of justice in consequence of his gentle disposition.”